As producers close the books on 2025, there’s little debate about how the year will be remembered. Commodity prices retreated from harvest highs, input costs refused to follow them lower and margins compressed from both sides. But for market analysts at StoneX Group, the real takeaway from 2025 isn’t the pain. It’s what the year reveals about where agriculture is headed next.
Looking ahead to 2026, Arlan Suderman, StoneX chief commodities economist, and Josh Linville, StoneX vice president of fertilizer, both say 2026 will be shaped by structural shifts that go far beyond one growing season. Global competitiveness, domestic demand growth, geopolitical risk and policy decisions are converging at the same time, and it’s how those forces resolve, or fail to do so, could determine whether 2026 brings opportunity, volatility or another year of pressure.
Suderman: “We’re Not the Lost Cost Producer in the World Anymore”
The downturn producers experienced in 2025 fits squarely into a longer-term cycle that began forming well before the year started, Suderman says.
“We’re entering the cycle, and supply becomes greater than demand, and prices go down, and we’re going to have lean times,” he says. “And that certainly happened [in 2025].”
That cycle, he says, exposed a deeper challenge facing U.S. agriculture, and one that won’t disappear just because markets eventually recover.
“We continue to lose market share to Brazil,” Suderman says. “The reality is we’re not the low-cost producer in the world anymore.”
That loss of cost advantage is having consequences that ripple across exports, acreage decisions and profitability.
“Brazil is going to be able to produce bulk commodities cheaper than us,” he says. “And with their cheap currencies, they’re going to be able to sell it cheaper than we.”
Suderman says that reality is forcing a shift in thinking for U.S. producers and policymakers.
“So we have to find other ways to generate revenue from what we do produce,” he says. “We’re great at producing it, but Brazil is going to be able to produce bulk commodities cheaper than us, and so we have to find other ways.”
Domestic Demand Becomes the Battleground
With export competition intensifying, Suderman says the next phase of market support must come from inside U.S. borders. That’s where biofuels, and specifically what EPA does with biomass-based diesel, will become central to the 2026 outlook.
“We have the biofuel program coming in, which we believe will transition to domestic demand to help replace the lost export demand,” he says.
Suderman points out that export demand to China is already structurally weaker, making domestic demand growth even more critical.
“We’re going to lose that export demand with China anyway,” he says. “So that EPA announcement looks to be good, but we’re still waiting. We’re still waiting for the final regulations from the EPA. We’ve been waiting for most of the past year.”
That delay, he says, isn’t just frustrating, Suderman says it has real economic consequences.
“If we get it by the end of the quarter, that means we’ve lost 25% of the production year,” he says. “If we get it very early in the year, then we can really ramp things up.”
Suderman also points out the details of the policy are just as important as the timing of the announcement.
“What will they do with the small refinery exemptions?” he asks. “Will they offset them all? Will they offset 50% of them? What will they do with the 50% credit for imported feedstocks that were originally proposed? Will that go up to 100%? Will it stay at 50%?”
StoneX expects compromise, but one that still boosts demand, which will be a critical market factor in 2026.
“Our bias is that we think they’re going to go closer to 100% on the feedstock but offset that by offsetting the SREs back onto the RVO,” he says.
If that happens, Suderman says soybeans stand to benefit first and most directly.
“We have tremendous crush potential for our soybeans,” he says. “If we drive soybean demand higher domestically, we can tighten up that balance sheet.”
That tightening, he says, changes the entire market dynamic.
“It leaves us vulnerable to a weather market,” Suderman says.
Corn Demand Is Strong, But Supply Still Dominates
Corn enters 2026 with a different set of fundamentals. Demand, Suderman says, is already robust, but production efficiency continues to cap rallies.
“Corn demand has been on fire,” he says. “We’ve become very good at producing it, and so that has been the problem there.”
One unexpected support has come from Brazil itself.
“Brazil has been ramping up corn ethanol production,” Suderman says. “That has made them less of a competitor in the export market than they otherwise would be.”
Even so, he expects the global balance sheet for corn to remain heavy, which could cap some of the excitement in the markets.
“Global corn demand has exceeded production for about the past decade,” he says. “But supplies were so large, we’re finally working them down to an area where it can start to matter.”
Suderman says that dynamic puts corn at a tipping point, but the market isn’t quite there just yet.
“It may be a year or two away,” he says. “But if we would have a weather problem this summer, we would suddenly find ourselves back in the situation where the market would have to respect that.”
Fertilizer: Where Do We Go From Here?
While producers look for demand-side relief, Linville says fertilizer markets remain one of the biggest headwinds going into 2026 with phosphate standing out above all others.
“You talk to any farmer out there who uses phosphate, and they’re going to tell you this thing is outrageously high priced,” Linville says. “If you look at it from a flat price comparison, it’s incredibly high. When you look at it versus grain values, they’re historically in decent shape, but phosphate values have gone so far above and beyond what we would consider normal.”
That disconnect has already altered behavior of the market, including some loss of demand this past fall
“You saw major demand destruction this fall,” Linville says. “There’s still a lot saying we’re going to see the same thing for spring.”
But the global backdrop limits how much leverage farmers actually have on prices, he says.
“As you look ahead to 2026, that output at export does not look like it’s going to improve,” Linville says. “We think it’s actually going to be markedly worse.”
And what’s the country that remains the linchpin in this discussion? He says that’s simple: It’s China.
“China is your typical leading exporter in the world. Eight to 10 million tons per year back in those normal years,” Linville says. “This year, we’ll be lucky if we get five million tons.”
Why Tight Supply Is Structural Not Strategic
Linville pushes back on the idea that global producers are intentionally tightening supply to inflate prices.
“They’re not restricting exports because they’re trying to drive the global price higher,” he says.
Instead, domestic priorities dominate.
“They’re trying to keep more supply in place for their own people,” Linville says. “There’s higher economic demand, growing industrial demand, battery manufacturing.”
The result is uneven pricing across regions.
“We have seen Chinese values be a decent discount versus the rest of the world,” he says. “It’s a little short-sighted from our standpoint, but when you’re the biggest exporter in the world, you get to do that.”
Nitrogen markets show some improvement, but remain vulnerable.
“You look at the Russian-Ukraine war — that’s a worry,” Linville says. “European production is still 75% of normal — that’s a worry.”
The deeper issue, he says, is how thin the global buffer has become.
“We just don’t have the excess production like we used to,” Linville says. “If there’s any impact to supply, the market reacts very quickly.”
Acreage and Logistics: Where Risk Still Builds
Looking to 2026, StoneX expects acreage shifts but not enough to materially ease fertilizer demand.
“I have corn down 3.5 million acres,” Suderman says. “Soybeans up 4 million acres.”
Much of that movement, he says, happens outside the Corn Belt.
“When you look at the South and the Plains, that can be up to 25% variance,” Suderman says. “That’s where you get your real shift.”
Even with fewer corn acres, Linville says fertilizer demand remains massive, which will support fertilizer prices.
“If we are truly going to be seeing something in the mid-90-million-acre corn range,” he says, “that’s a tremendous amount of fertilizer.”
His biggest concern isn’t price, it’s the timing.
“My worry is that when we all say: ‘Yes, we need that product for spring,’ everybody’s going to rush to market at the same time,” Linville says. “Logistics will penalize us severely.”
He says with that possibility in 2026, retailers are already adjusting to it.
“They can only take so much risk,” Linville says. “So they can only buy so much without further information.”
His advice heading into 2026 centers on communication not prediction.
“Keep having those conversations with your supplier, your retailer, your co-op,” Linville says. “I’m not saying go out and buy it, but have these conversations so the market can plan and be ready for spring.”